Today’s topic is a non-fictional book.  Mkayyyy.  I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, admittedly.  Real life is enough for me. I like to escape into something made up. The only exception is books on writing. A lot of people have mentioned Stephen King’s On Writing. I’ll post a review that I did on his book last year.

On Writing by Stephen King My goodreads review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked up this book on a whim from Amazon, while searching for some books on Writing. It comes pretty highly recommended from those who have read it.

The first third is basically King’s autobiography– events in his life that have made him who he is. I enjoyed the first ten pages but I am a ‘get tot the point’ kind of girl, so I skipped to the second part, which was most enjoyable.

Part 2, On Writing, was basically King’s best advice to writers. In summation, here’s pretty much what I picked up:

1. Read a lot. Read, read, read, read. Turn off the TV, remove all distractions, read because you enjoy reading.
2. Write. Write because you want to write, because it’s crawling to get out of you. Write like it’s your job. Set a goal to write daily (1000 words at first, then 2000-3000) if you can do it. Don’t leave your ‘spot’ until you’re done writing.
3. Don’t do all the cliche things writers supposedly do, i.e. write for money, or ‘plot’ your story.
4. Don’t assume that you control the story– the story controls you. Let it tell itself, don’t try to push it in any direction.
5. Remove unnecessary words. Use fewer words whenever possible. In descriptions, in narration, in character, in dialogue– delete the uncessesary
6. On the other hand, don’t tell, show. Don’t tell me that someone is uneducated. Show me with crafty use of dialect in conversation. Don’t tell me someone is tired, overworked, frustrated– SHOW the reader.
7. Create an IR- an Ideal Reader. Decide what your Ideal Reader would want to see and write to them.
8. Never write because it seems like a job. The hardest part of life should be when you’re purposely not writing.
9. From time to time, read bad prose. It will teach you what not to do!
10. (I’ve heard this a lot and have only seen it done really well a few times) Don’t use flashbacks. Talk about what’s GOING to happen and not what already has.

The last third of the book is talking about his 1999 accident in which he nearly died. After which he decided to finish On Writing and get back to the business of writing great fiction. It ends with an example of a piece of a chapter that he had edited and polished and allowed readers to see the transformation from an ‘okay’ piece to something that he’d call ‘good’.

Reading this reminds me that I used to follow these principles, and they sort of fell by the wayside after a time. I didn’t make them a habit and a part of my writing life.  I’d love to promise that I will, but I probably won’t. Right now I write when I want to, as often as I want to. When it stops being fun, I stop doing it.  Works for me.

Have you read a great nonfiction piece lately? Share!

I am skipping a bunch of days because I don’t have any pictures of me, or pictures of me from ten years ago. I absolutely hate how I look in pictures, so I’ve never really taken any.

Today’s topic is a fictional book. I’m not quite sure what I am supposed to do with that, so I’ll post one of my reviews from last year of a book I read that I loved loved loved. This book was great but really confusing. I need to read it again, because some of it just didn’t make sense to me.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I didn’t read The Time Traveler’s Wife. The synopsis never struck me as something I really wanted to read and I couldn’t get into it. I can’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. Probably good, because from the reviews, a lot of people went into reading Her Fearful Symmetry on the heels of Time Traveler’s Wife and expected it to be similar. It apparently wasn’t. I also didn’t know the two books were written by the same author– this book came recommended by two different people in two different circles of friends. I picked it up on a whim and started reading it. I find the best books that way!

This story begins oh, so right. Niffenegger jumps right into the middle of the story and wades around in it. Our main character… dies on Page One. And I figure if someone dies on Page One, there’s a good reason for it and a good story behind it.

This novel is the story of two sets of twins: Edie and Elspeth, and Edie’s twin daughters Julia and Victoria.  Edie and Elspeth are estranged. Have been for nearly twenty years. Elspeth’s terminal illness does not change this. Elspeth lives in London, in a flat above  companion Robert. Edie, her husband Jack, and the twins live in the States.

When Elspeth dies, she leaves her flat, all of her belongings and her money to the twins, with the stipulation that they have to live in the flat for a year before they can sell it. And that their parents, Edie and Jack, must never set foot in it. Her papers and diaries are removed, property of Robert. No one is to see them. Robert avoids reading them until absolutely necessary.

The twins are 20, but are small and thin and alarmingly co-dependent. Victoria is a mirror image of Julia, down to the beauty mark on her cheek. Victoria is weak, with a heart defect and severe asthma. Julia delights in taking care of Victoria, and is a constant companion. Victoria is the more artistic and fashionable one. She creates and sews and makes her own clothing. Julia is the smart, the healthy and strong one. The trade-off, Julia thinks, isn’t fair. Victoria is the pretty one, despite their being twins. Julia is envious of the attention Victoria receives without even trying and insists on clinging to her. They have to do everything together. One cannot attend school without the other. One cannot work without the other. Both are still virgins because…what one does, the other must also. The suffocation is palpable.

Moving to London begins to change the lives of the twins in ways they could never plan for, or imagine. They meet other characters and cast members in Elspeth’s life– Martin, the OCD genius who lives upstairs, who showers three times a day and is compelled to scrub the floor for hours and stacks his life in plastic bins around his apartment, whose wife loves him more than life itself, but left him to have a life of her own. Robert, who lives downstairs, who avoids the twins like the plague when they arrive, whose sorrow over the loss of Elspeth is driving him mad, daily, who thinks he feels her presence, in her flat. Her ghost seems to haunt the place, knocking books over and pushing paperclips around and stirring curtains.

As the girls enjoy life in London, their relationship begins to change. A bigger world means more opportunity, more to explore, more to do. Their interests begin to divide. They bicker and the threads that once tied them together start to unravel. Robert meets the girls and it takes his breath away how much Victoria resembles Elspeth. More than he wants to, he likes her. He can’t help but approach her and want to be near her. But there is the issue of missing Elspeth.

Who isn’t really missing, at all. She is there, in the flat. Stuck in the spirit world, as an energy. Haunting them until she’s able to find a way to let them all know she’s there. Using a crudely concocted OUIJA board and later a pencil and paper, the girls finally meet their Aunt Elspeth– if only after death. There are questions yet unanswered and mysteries yet unsolved.

Why didn’t Edie and Elspeth talk?

Why did Elspeth leave her worldly goods to two girls she had never met?

Why couldn’t their parents visit, and why couldn’t the girls read her diaries?

SECRET, Elspeth says. Oh. And a secret it is!

There are so many elements to this story, and one- no, two!-amazing plot twists. I do so love a plot twist! So many interwoven story lines, existing on their own course until they converge. The twins are the crux… everything else, everyone else are like the spokes of a wheel.

There are three parts to this story, each equally intriguing, but I don’t think that all are weighed equally. Part One begins slowly, unfurling the tale, lazy in its reveal, raising more questions than it answers. Part Two is full of change and discovery and adventure and drama and mystery, a tearing a part and a putting back together and a horrid plan that NO ONE should agree to, but all involved, unfortunately, do.

Part Three is the carrying out of said plan. And the backfire. And the end result. Part three made me gasp, made my eyes bug out, made my heart ache. And the end made me shake my head and say, ‘well that’s what you get, now isn’t it?’

For the writers in the room, I think what was most off-putting actually was the third person omniscient. The reader reads what everyone is doing, thinking, feeling. I found this POV to be really confusing. Perhaps the story would have been more gripping if we weren’t so privy to everything. A little mystery adds a lot. Make me guess, don’t tell me everything. Even simple third person might have made it a tad easier to understand, but I got it figured out, so I guess it wasn’t that bad.

There are some twists in this book that I still sort of don’t understand, involving the decades long estrangement between Edie and Elspeth. I think I’ll have to read it again soon, concentrating on that part, to understand it better. Overall I really enjoyed the book. Part Three, especially is un-put-down-able!

It doesn’t make me want to read Time Traveler’s Wife, though.

So… not sure if that’s what I was supposed to talk about today but there’s something fictional.  What have YOU read lately?

Sometimes I wonder about people and their defining moments. At what moment does someone go from someone who paints to Painter? Someone who blogs to Blogger? Someone who crafts to Artist? Someone who writes to Writer?

For some it might be when they start getting paid to do it. Or when others begin to call them by the title. Or when they’re recognized for it.

I wavered a bit on posting this here because I’d already written about it in my writing journal. It’s so not a huge deal and yet it is, because it is my first. A few weeks (okay, like a month ago) I wrote out an entry in my writing journal about how I was fit to be tied and full of jealousy because GreenEyes was writing for a national publication and here I am, calling myself a writer and I’m writing for diddly squat. I blog, but I only call that writing in terms of counting the words for my annual word count goal. It does help me express myself but I blog to blog and not to write or craft or create. It’s nothing I am doing on purpose to have my talent recognized.

So I decided to get off my literary ass and start writing something that could be posted somewhere and sit for eternity. I admit that I did not aim very high. I submitted a piece that I spent quite a bit of time on to a short story archive– the kind of place where they’ll post pretty much anything.  The other was a bit more discriminating, but too late, I realized that they hadn’t posted a story since Fall of 2009. The backlog, if they’re even posting new stories, is likely huge. I don’t even want to worry about that one.

I submitted my short story, entitled ‘Try To Say No‘ about a girl trapped in a friends with benefits situation that she can’t get herself out of, about a month ago, I’d guess. Maybe less time than that. Yesterday I got an email that it was accepted at short-story.net. WOOP!

I don’t know if, at this point, I call myself published. I may save that distinction for a more discriminating entry process. I DO know, now, that my work (besides the fanfiction that I have written which is strictly for fun) is part of an archive and will remain there until… well until the site goes down, I suppose!

What I do call myself, now, is writer. And not even tongue in cheek and rolling my eyes and pretending to be modest about it. I also need to call myself busy working on some other pieces. Like finishing my NaNoWriMo piece. It’s STILL not done. I may have to go back, in the story, and start from a different angle, or something. Or figure out how I want it to end and work my way backward.

Maybe I’ll finish it before NaNo2010 begins. : /

I think this set of questions is more directed toward the professional and not the personal blogger, but as I was skipping through them looking for something to blog about today, some thoughts came to me so I decided to pretend that it was relevant to me, and do it anyway.

These questions came from The Pajama Professional:

1. What do you like most about your blog or the niche about which you write?

I think what I like most is that it’s completely mine. Unlike at work where I am usually editing a letter or website content or a marketing piece that isn’t about me or what I want to say, what I put here are my own thoughts and ideas and musings. Since I’m not all that popular (yet, *sniggle*) I have the freedom to say almost anything I really want to say, within reason. I can be honest and gracious, as opposed to tactless and mean, about things that really matter to me. Above all, I love the control I have to show as much or as little as I really want to show.

2. What made you stop thinking of yourself as someone who writes a blog and give yourself the title of “blogger”?

I don’t know that I’ve crossed over that threshold yet. It may take some time and a few hundred more blog posts. Maybe when things begin to come to me without having to think what am I going to blog about? and when I feel like I have stories to tell and things to share that people actually want to read. It’s kind of like the transition between saying I write and finally being able to call myself a writer. I think that step came with validation from other writers? Interesting question– I’m not sure there is a whole helluva lotta difference between someone who blogs and a blogger. Though I imagine pro bloggers might beg to differ.

3. If you could write in any other niche and be successful (pretend you’re an expert in the field even if you’re not) about what subject would you write?

I’m a big fan of crime drama– Law and Order Original/SVU/Criminal Intent, I will watch until my eyes fall out, if there’s a marathon. I used to be big into CSI: Las Vegas.  CSI: Miami kind of snuck up on me when I got cable and started watching the reruns on A&E-which was how I discovered my new obsession, Criminal Minds. Cold Case (both the documentary style show on A&E and the drama on CBS), Forensic Files– I’m all over the stuff.  I love the puzzle. I love seeing the pieces spread out, and watch them come together into one big picture, 42 minutes later.

I can’t write it, though.  Pains me, because I’d love to but nothing really comes to mind, when I set out to write it. I usually default to general dramatic fiction or romance, which is just… laughable, really.

4. The best selling magazine in the same niche as your blog has just offered you a full-time writing position. The only stipulation is that you will no longer be able to maintain your blog for conflict of interest reasons. Do you take the job or keep the blog?

Since this is a personal blog, I can’t imagine where that would be a logical proposition. If I was writing a blog on a particular subject matter and was offered a full time position doing the exact same thing for a bigger audience, I’d likely take the full time writing job. It’s hard to say, though, since full time writing is a little bit of a pipe dream for me. I’ve often reflected on a full, busy, satisfying day at work and think now imagine if I could have the same feeling from being able to write all day! I used to follow a lot of writers on twitter and discovered that I was  jealous of how much time they had to spend on twitter and blogs, writing about writing, while I’m at work answering phones, arguing with the fax machine, trying to stay on top of everything on my plate. If all I had to do was get up, fill the coffee cup, and go into my office and write (and get paid to do it), that would be heaven.

5. What traits or stats would you use as criteria if you had to determine whether or not a blog was successful?

Well… what is a successful blog?  Are the criteria for personal blogs any different from professional blogs or even entertainment/gossip blogs?  To me, a few things translate across the board: high readership and active commentary, content that gets quoted and passed around the internet and back-linked all to hell are signs of success to me. I said something, and people not only listened, but passed it along. A successful personal blog, to me (and I’m thinking in terms of what I want for my blogs and not for anyone else’s) would be

• Regularly updated content
• Easily readable, memorable material
• Relays a point of view that readers can relate to, respond to, resonate with
• Have a great track record. 3 months of great, regular blogging don’t equal success, to me. Longevity matters
• Active reader participation. I think this goes to the question of why people maintain blogs– do I blog for me or do I blog for the people who read me? Back when I decided to open this blog, I went back and forth on it because while it’s not at all expensive, I am paying for web space. That $5 a month makes me think about what I’m doing, here and who I’m doing it for.  Every time I pay my hosting bill, I think about the purpose of my blog and evaluate it– am I doing what I set out to do, or is this a waste of $5?

This also goes back to the age old writing question, especially if you’re part of a community that offers reviews and critiques. There are a lot of whiny writers out there who throw a tantrum if they feel like they’re writing into oblivion. If they don’t get enough reviews or others get more reviews than they do, they start turning into high school sophomores whining about cliques. What it boils down to is that they’re not getting feedback. Not only are people not reading them, people aren’t saying why they’re not reading them. And when they whine about it, we ask what does it matter??? Do they write for themselves, or do they write for reviews? Do full time writers write to see their books on a shelf, or to see their books on a best seller list? I wonder if Stephen King ever throws a tantrum when a book doesn’t debut on on the New York Times Best Sellers List? (Not that this has ever happened, for Stephen King…)  I’m guessing not, but then again, comparing a hobby writer to Stephen King may be an insult.

As for me, I write for myself first… but if I put it out there for others to read, I want it to be palatable. Pretending that it doesn’t matter if people find me boring or nonsensical or not memorable does me no good, because it directly affects what I publish and becomes part of my standards for myself.  If I truly blogged for myself, I wouldn’t invite others to read it and respond. I wouldn’t be obsessed with my stats and marvel and how they climb higher as time goes on. I wouldn’t *squee* whenever I get an email that I have a new comment, and rush here to see what someone had to say.

Since most of my readership- all eight of you– are personal bloggers, what are your thoughts? When you write, what are you aiming for? Is your blog just an outlet, or do you feel like it’s a ‘show’? Or a combination of both? If someone were to tell you ‘here’s what’s wrong with your blog’, would you heed that advice or keep on keepin’ on?  It’s totally okay to be self centered right now.  Let’s talk about YOU.

A quickie, because I want to blog but I actually spent the last few hours writing (*tosses confetti*) so I don’t really want to look at the computer much longer.

I don’t know what the block was and I don’t know that it has fully moved it’s ass out of the way of my mojo, but I was able to get a little over 4,000 good, keepable words in, today. Yay. I normally don’t go into too much detail about writing here since I have a writing blog for that but I think it may have had something to do with a big decision that I made this week. It will require some drastic changes in part of my life but I am ready for them. I feel light and at peace with the decision that I made– and apparently that was really good for my creativity.

Woot!

Hello World!

I’m here! I’ve been recovering from the Month of Writing Dangerously, aka NaNoWriMo. You know, sleeping, showering, eating, doing anything BUT writing. It’s been good and fun. Funny thing is, I’m kind of itching to get back to writing. I just sort of don’t want to look at my manuscript right now.

I am suddenly a social butterfly, it would seem. Odd. I’m kind of a loner. I have invites to two parties and my friend Kary is coming to visit in a couple of weeks. I’ve actually never met Kary, I only know her online. We’ve talked for a long time and share a love of the same band. Plus she is supercool supergood people and lots of fun, so I’m REALLY excited to be meeting her.

So, -this Saturday is Holiday Party #1- My boss’ Annual Holiday Bash. I don’t want to go. But I am making myself go. I know I will have fun once I get there. His wife is a delightful woman, I really enjoy her. So I’ll go and stay a few hours at least. My boss lives in the same building that Janet Jackson and Elton John have condos in. So, yeah slightly upscale.

Party #2 is not until the 13th and should be less fancy.  I mean, kids will be in the basement. It is my CFO’s Annual Party. I have been promised good food. Looking forward to THAT!

I often find that it isn’t that I’m anti-social… it’s that I party differently than others. I don’t really drink much, because I’m always driving. Party Hosts often assume everyone is drinking and rarely have juice or diet soda available. Which leaves me to bring my own. How lame do I look, walking around with a six pack of diet cherry Pepsi? Hmmm. I think both parties will turn out fine.

Not to mention, I am kind of shy. I KNOW! You’d never guess, huh? I’m socially awkward, I was never really taught how to be sociable. A good time for me is hanging out in the corner, watching people, waiting until I feel like I ‘know’ some people before jumping in. I like for people to ‘get to know me’ before meeting me. It takes the pressure off and I can be myself.  This is why I LOVED online dating. Until I met every freak, weirdo, scam artist and pansy who didn’t know what he wanted so he thought he’d drag me along for the ride while he figured it out.

OY.

Also in my world, I haven’t done any Christmas shopping. And I’m starting to stress out about it! It’s not that I don’t have the money, I just don’t want to shop. I’m not quite in the spirit yet. I’m going to see if I can drum some up over the weekend. I have Secret Santas and nephews to get gifts for. And MYSELF! MYSELF needs a gift!

This year I am hoping to get me a big-dang-TV and surround sound system. We’ll see. It’s a lot of money that I’m kind of not willing to spend on myself. But I know I will enjoy it once I have it. So I should just bite the bullet and do it. Huh?

Meh.

Is it vacation time, yet?

It’s Monday, again. How does that keep happening?

Thankfully it is a short week, because the last few weeks have been long and hectic and busy. Which I love, but it makes me crave some good old fashioned slow time. Here’s to hoping it will be quiet and peaceful. Boss is at our TX location this week and then off Wed-end of the week, so there’s a good chance of that. Yay.

So, some thoughts. Instead of spewing them all over twitter, I’ll just post them here. Then I can stop thinking them and go on with my life.

1. AMA’s missed them. On purpose. I dislike awards shows, mostly because I don’t have the attention span to sit through artists/comedians/actors I don’t know or recognize or don’t give a rip about. Also because Award shows have weird practices in which I rarely think the choices are genuine. Sometimes people win because of personal politics. Sometimes people win because it’s good PR.

And sometimes people win because they died — I’m looking at you Michael Joseph Jackson. I’m as big a fan as anyone, but what, exactly did MJ release this year that was worthy of being nominated let alone winning an AMA this year? Nothing. For example, the album that sold millions of copies this year was released in 2003. HOW is that eligible? That album can’t even register on the regular pop chart! Do I think it’s incredible that his music is still selling? YES. Do I miss his musical inspiration and do I feel we’ve lost a legend? Yes. Should his nomination and awards take away from artists who were busting their asses recording and touring while he wasn’t? No. Number Ones shouldn’t have even been eligible for nomination. Not to mention that there’s so much fanfare, now that he’s gone, that he would have loved to see when he was alive. It’s a shame that we don’t honor people more in life. We wait till they’re dead and then heap meaningless awards on them.

While I’m on the AMA’s, lemme just say– I’m not a Taylor Swift fan at all. She reminds me of debut Avril Lavigne, all in the voice. In fact, I heard her song on the radio once and asked V when Avril was going to stop singing about high school, so don’t think this rant is about her musical talent. I’m SICK of reading how Taylor needs to thank Kanye for all of her exposure. Taylor doesn’t need to thank Kanye for ****. She had ALREADY WON THAT AWARD when he showed his ass. She had already been on Ellen, had already sold millions of albums, had already topped the country charts. Let’s not reward Kanye’s assholish behavior by saying he made her a star– she already WAS one. I’ve never seen more grace under fire than I’ve seen from Taylor, so people who are on her behind need to back the truck up. Cause I said so!

2. I think I am going to go on a diet. Stop laughing! Really. So here’s the deal: I always manage to lose about 15 lbs between Nov and the beginning of the year, because I’m not that big of a holiday food eater. I’ll have a plate or two over the entire season, but I can’t handle days on end of turkey and stuffing and potatoes and gravy, and then pies and cakes and cookies and candy– I just can’t do it. I’m not a holiday eater, really.  

I think I am either going to have to figure out a way to tie myself to the bandwagon, or accept myself as fat and move on to being great in some other way. Maybe I will never see a single digit size in my lifetime. Maybe I will never be svelte and thin. Maybe I will always have ‘too much junk in the trunk’ and ‘too much booty in the pants’.  But then I look at myself and know that I have issues with how much weight I am carrying. I don’t like what I see and I don’t want to be here. I, however, can’t figure out a way to keep myself committed to healthy eating.

I was chatting about this topic with Skinnyemmie’s Emily Sandford last week. She was in Atlanta for work, and it was wonderful to put a face to a name that I’ve been talking to online for such a long time. She said, and it really resonated with me, “If you’re not ready to do it, it won’t stick. So don’t waste your time. Eat what you want and enjoy it. When you’re ready, it’ll happen.” I’m trying to decide if I’m ready.

3. Uhm. Is anyone aware that November 30th is NEXT WEEK?  What is November 30th, you ask? Have you not been paying any attention to me at all?

NaNoWriMo ends Nov 30th. By that point, all participants will have been expected to achieve at least a 50,000 word count and, best case scenario a finished piece. I passed the 50K mark on November 15th. I have not, however, finished my piece. Honestly I would say I’m just over halfway done. I realized that I was unable to move on because my story is missing a big chunk called………STORY. I was trying to skip a chunk of time in my storyline. It didn’t work. So I spent the weekend writing some filler– in fact I still have half a chapter of filler to write. Since I’ve already hit 50K, I haven’t really followed the ‘don’t edit, just write’ rule. At this point, I want it to make sense and not end lame. So, it would appear that I have 7 days to make that happen in order to meet my own deadline. Wow.

Uh. I hope I make it.

So, since I have work to do, I guess I will stop ranting and get to work. And by work I mean writing. I love when Boss is out!